Reviewed by Tony Chapelle
Is it the end of the world? Or worse. In October 1962 eleven-year-old Robert Smith, his family and the village they reside in, are facing a weekend that could decide the end of the world – then things get worse.
The legacy of WWII hangs over the little hydro community in central North island, New Zealand as its residents – characters of all ages, ethnicities and nationalities – seek closure, forgiveness and even revenge, while preparing for a possible nuclear war due to the Cuban Missile Crisis half a world away.
At the beginning of this fateful weekend, Robert has injured a white fantail, the bird associated with messaging and death. Worse, this is a white tiwakaka, the guardian of a local ghostly presence that will wreak havoc if it escapes.
While nursing the fantail, Robert finds himself caught up in an unfolding drama. An incident at the end of World War Two now threatens to shatter the village peace, and he becomes an unwitting pawn in a dangerous and inter-generational game of revenge and reconciliation.
This novel is set mainly in 1962, at around the time the world held its breath as the Cuban Missile Crisis played itself out. As the author reminds us, being a country of relative insignificance half a world away from the place where a nuclear war might well have begun didn’t shelter us from fear of the possible consequences – not even in the remote dam-building settlement just north of Taupo where the action takes place.
Such towns and settlements have been an important feature of New Zealand’s social and economic history (Otago and West Coast mining communities and railway villages of the nineteenth century, for example, and the forestry and hydro settlements of the twentieth), and it is good to find a novel that describes so well the conditions of life in such places.
This particular community is inhabited by a variety of people from around the world – as well as New Zealanders (Māori and Pakeha), the novel features a German and a Russian, Australians, English and South Africans, a Welshman, and a mysterious Harley-riding American. Most of the main protagonists are haunted by incidents and memories of the War, which had concluded only some seventeen years earlier, and which had been one of the principle reasons people found themselves in this hydro town.
In fact, several of those protagonists had shared in frightful experiences during that war, unresolved incidents that come to a head in the course of the story. There is a great deal of coincidence involved in these people ending up together in this little community, but the author has us believing that it is not at all impossible that things could have worked out this way. The actual wartime incidents are revealed mainly in the narratives given by the people involved to the narrator of the story – an eleven-year-old boy called Roberto Smith. They are harrowing incidents, and reminders of the inhuman brutality of war.
There is an element of the other-worldly in the book, centred on the narrator’s attempts to nurse back to health a white fantail he has inadvertently injured (his deep concern at having done so makes for a cracking start to the story). If it dies, he is told, human tragedy might follow. In this regard, a forest-dwelling and possibly malevolent spirit from local Māori lore plays a role in elevating the tension at key times.
All of this amounts to absorbing, exciting reading; but even more rewarding is the deft way that the author draws his flesh and blood characters. Here are people, male and female, we can all relate to and (even in the least likely case) have real sympathy for. They are opinionated, occasionally funny, and they have their weaknesses; but they are always interesting.
The narrator being an eleven-year-old, this novel could possibly be characterised as ‘young adult’ – though certain descriptions and themes might be problematic for some. It is certainly a novel that adults would enjoy. Strong, familiar characters, surprising developments as well as vivid descriptions of ordinary life in a 1960s rural community, and action aplenty – it’s a winning formula.
This book was a finalist for the 2021 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel
This review was first published in FlaxFlower reviews, which focuses on in-depth reviews of New Zealand books of all kinds, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of Flaxflower founder and editor Bronwyn Elsmore.
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